A POPULAR RADIO SERIES a dozen years ago, dealing broadly with the importantarea that is the subject of my talk tonight, was called (borrowing its titlefrom Shakespeare) “Brave New World.” Braver still, in the modern sense, isthe commentator who tries in a brief talk like this to deal with even onephase of the vast area, of some eight million square miles, and constitutingabout one-fifth of the world’s inhabited continents, that lies South of thecontinental United States. But I am what is called in Spanish an “OldChristian” in these matters, which may be roughly interpreted as theopposite of a “Johnny-Come-Lately,” as our own phrase has it. I have been astudent of this area for nearly fifty years, a teacher of one of itslanguages, Spanish, and of the literature and other written materialspublished in that language, for more than forty years. During the past fouryears I have spent my summer vacations on educational missions that took meto all of the American republics except two—Bolivia and Paraguay. In someinstances I have made two or three visits to individual countries duringthat period, supplementing a number of earlier trips, the first of which wasin 1916. So I must be as “brave” as the fascinating and to us tremendouslyimportant complex of nations that make up the New World outside of theUnited States and Canada, which for want of a really accurate term we callLatin America.